Need a host to host a forum based website

Hello All

I need the following for a webhost can anyone help?

Basically im gonna launch this website which is gonan be a discussion forum. I am expecting huge hits and a lot of visitors posting on the forum. its expected to be pretty busy..So im assuming i will need quite a bit of Disk Space along with Bandwidth.

Im nt sure usually how much bandwidth..or disk space is needed to host a discussion forum...if someone can suggest to me a reasonable Price and Specification from what i have mentioned to u then i wud be highly appreciative..who can offer me a good deal!

Please also tell me whether u have offices and if i try to call support someone is always tehre to pick it up..or whether u run from home or a bedroom outfit..and also please state how long u been in business for and other clients that u host!

Look forward for replies

REgards
saj

How is it based? PHP or ASP? How large are you talking? How many visitors per day?

From your post it sounds like what you really need a flexible host that isn't going to stick you with a contract, that will allow you to change your hosting plan every month as your traffic levels grow.

You're also going to need someone with a cheap overusage fee so that you don't end up paying for overused bandwidth with an arm and a leg. Some hosts offer "good deals" but pay attention to the details, some times their overusage fees are completely outrageous like $30 @ GB which is a complete rip off.

You'll need PHP and MySQL as well. There aren't many ASP forum programs anyway and ASP is not as optimized as PHP.

No contracts, $2 @ GB for overusage => ReallyNiceHosting.com

how come you said 2 but your sig says 1

$2 a GB for overusage

$1 a GB for planned usage.

Overusage is when you sign up for a 5 GB @ month plan and you use 7 GB in one month, you would have 2 GB of overusage.

oh my bad, i didn't pay attention

It's cool, a lot of people get that confused, thanks for reminding me to clarify it

Hi - I'm new here - but a very helpful forum indeed. I saw this post and wanted to answer. A couple days ago I launched my forum - URL (for guitar players) and used a host mysitespace whom I had been using for free hosting prior.

Although I did upload a new skin and change the graphic - that forum you see there on my site took me all of 5 minutes to install from my account control panel and the hosting plan is costing me all of $3.95 per month. You can check them out at URL if you are still looking.

I hope this helps.

Sounds alright, not too much disk space however and I think that Softrec said that they need quite a bit of disk space as well.

Anyway PODTalk how do you like version 2 of PHPBB?

Do you like it as much as these forums?

Just wondering because PHPBB seems to have undergone a lot of improvements lately, and looks like it can compete with VBulletin now... and this forum runs VBulletin, $160 program, while PHPBB is free (open source).

Hi rn - so far I am liking the php2bb brand great. Ofcourse I've only been using it for 2 days now and have a whopping 5 posts or something - but I could not argue with the price.

It also seemed the easiest to modify with other skins and stuff which I found cool.

Just curious - how does phpbb stay in business if they let us use the software for free?

mainly donations...

Most "free" open source software is developed by volunteers and contributors with other "day jobs" as programmers.

They also make money by people paying them to install the software, some open source companies make money by selling advertising on their sites, PHPBB sells T-shirts and other stuff at their online store.

Open source software isn't always technically "free" either... Some open source software developers ask (or try to coerce) you to pay/donate for their software, such as Red Hat Linux, so it's not always technically free although due to the Gnu Public Licensing just about any open source software can always be legally obtained for free since you are free to redistribute it.

Some open source websites you might want to check out are:

http://www.sourceforge.net/
http://www.opensource.org/
http://www.phpbb.com/
http://www.postnuke.com/
http://www.phpadsnew.com/
http://www.oscommerce.com/

phpBB is pretty good, for the price

Invision Power Board is so much better though. http://www.invisionpowerboard.com

For me there's only 2 choices...

PHPBB

or

Vbulletin

Vbulletin costs $160 and is definitely not worth the money, but I have a copy of it so...

and invisionpowerboard.com says cannot find server as I post this, I'll look into that one later and see if their site will load for me then, thanks for the heads up on that a.koepke

Opps, just noticed I got confused with the URL

Invision Power Board: http://www.invisionboard.com/
Invision Power Website: http://www.invisionpower.com